The college's new center for early learning officially opened with a ribbon-cutting this morning.

It provides activities for children of different age groups, in areas including technology, the arts and reading.

"We're looking at a huge bike path and a walking trail with that," says the center's director, Angela Davis. "We're looking at a lot of natural-looking equipment, stepping things, climbing things, swings. A lot of equipment they don't have now at the old center."

The $1 million facility replaces the one-room children center in the college's main campus building.

The program has room for 45 children per semester.

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Dual groundbreakings at West Virginia University at Parkersburg were enough to bring out several local dignitaries...including West Virginia's acting governor, Earl Ray Tombin.

One was for a $5 million applied technology building, and the other was for a $1 million child development center.

The 21,000 square foot technology building will include lab rooms and classrooms for welding, industrial maintenance and multi-craft technology classes.

Both buildings are to be completed by the fall of 2012.

"It is a very lengthy project...they will have 300 days for building," says WVU-P President Marie Foster-Gnage. "But we assume the child development center will take a shorter period of time. So at least one of those buildings will be ready for learning in the fall of 2012."

The child development center is designed to teach young children arts, literacy and technology beyond the normal classroom environment.

"It's good not only for the children themselves," Governor Tomblin says, "but for the students who are going into early childhood education have that hands-on experience and watching the behavior of the children. I think it's a great thing."

Both projects were funded through the sale of bonds through a state program approved by the West Virginia Legislature a few years ago.

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